Enabling the Matchmaking of Organizations and Public Procurement Notices by Means of Linked Open Data

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to present a proposal and a case study to describe the information about organizations in a standard way using the Linked Data approach. Several models and ontologies have been provided in order to formalize the data, structure and behaviour of organizations. Nevertheless, these tries have not been fully accepted due to some factors: (1) missing pieces to define the status of the organization; (2) tangled parts to specify the structure (concepts and relations) between the elements of the organization; 3) lack of text properties, and other factors. These divergences imply a set of incomplete approaches to formalize data and information about organizations. Taking into account the current trends of applying semantic web technologies and linked data to formalize, aggregate, and share domain specific information, a new model for organizations taking advantage of these initiatives is required in order to overcome existing barriers and exploit the corporate information in a standard way. This work is especially relevant in some senses to: (1) unify existing models to provide a common specification; (2) apply semantic web technologies and the Linked Data approach; (3) provide access to the information via standard protocols, and (4) offer new services that can exploit this information to trace the evolution and behaviour of the organization over time. Finally, this work is interesting to improve the clarity and transparency of some scenarios in which organizations play a key role, like e-procurement, e-health, or financial transactions.